The observed
If every seven years someone showed up with a camera and asked you how you felt about every facet of your life and then showed the result to millions of people, how would you feel? Some of the subjects in 49Up are clearly very upset about having been chosen to be profiled. They resent the intrusion and the effect the project has had on their lives. They've been observed, intently, when they might have preferred to remain invisible.
It's very moving to see them as 7-year-olds, these 49-year-olds. Rather like having a family photo album that can talk. It was surprising to me how much of the talk was in anger, but from their perspective it hardly feels voluntary — this project has shaped their lives.
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